


Important

by 8lapetitehirondelle8



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Beware the fluff...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 08:53:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11272134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8lapetitehirondelle8/pseuds/8lapetitehirondelle8
Summary: We make time for what's important to us.





	Important

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CustardCreamies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CustardCreamies/gifts).



> So... I was trawling through the comments on a fic here somewhere and I happened to notice a certain user bemoaning a lack of 'Jezza fics'...
> 
> CustardCreamies, this one's for you. (Sorry if it's not quite what you had in mind!)
> 
> <3

**Important**

 

There was really only one word for it: Disaster.

Audrey’s kitchen was a disaster. A complete and unmitigated disaster. There were bowls and knives and all manner of culinary accoutrements spread out haphazardly across the work top. Several more chopping boards than could possibly have been necessary were off to one side, bits of things she could only assume had once been ingredients stuck to them in various states of disassembly. Something was bubbling away on the stove and the oven door was open, the back half of a person sticking out of it.

“The fuck have you done to my kitchen, Clarkson?” 

The half-a-person pulled his head out of the oven and turned to face her, hands on hips, affronted. “Now that’s gratitude for you! I slave away all afternoon,  _ ON MY DAY OFF, MIND YOU _ ,” he brandished a spoon pointedly in her direction, “to make sure you have something decent to eat when you get home from dealing with all those bloody cats you herd all day, because if I know you - and I do - you’ve eaten nothing but bits and pieces from around the office and the odd half-sandwich the entire week I’ve been gone, and this is the thanks I get! Honestly!” 

Jeremy threw up his hands in mock frustration and employed a rather valedictory flourish as he stirred his pot, but Audrey could see the smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. She had a similar one trying to escape but clamped it down out of sheer bullheadedness and said, “I have a question.”

“What?” He asked mock-tartly. He caught her taking a piece of bell pepper off of a plate and swatted her hand, “Oi! I needed that!”

“Rubbish! It was twice the size of the rest of them, it wouldn’t cook at the same rate. I did you a favour!” She munched on the pepper and around it asked, “Does this sudden concern for my dietary welfare come with cleanup service?”

“Of course it does! Just what manner of man do you think I am!?”

They were both starting to laugh now, so Audrey rolled her eyes and moved around into the kitchen proper. “The manner of man who willfully causes chaos in his lady friend’s kitchen under the guise of ‘ _ doing something nice _ ’.”

“Yes, well, see if I ever do it for you again you ungrateful tart.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist then and looked up at him, “Missed you, you bastard.”

He tossed the spoon aside and hugged back, “Missed you, too, Aud.” They kissed until the pot on the stove boiled over. “Bollocks!”

Audrey laughed, “I think I’ll retire to a safe distance.”

From where he was attempting to get the pot back under control Jeremy said, “That might be a good idea, actually.”

Audrey moved to the living room and stretched out on the sofa, propping her head up so she could keep an eye on the activity in her kitchen. “Was it a decent trip, then? The weather was supposed to have been alright.”

“Wasn’t too bad. We managed to get the bulk of it in the can on the fourth day. Spent the rest of the time with the fiddly bits, you know. Should be a decent piece once we’ve-” Jeremy was cut off by his mobile ringing. “Oh for- Could you get that, Aud? I’m sorry, I’m a bit…” he raised his hands which were covered in vegetable remnants. 

“Where is it?” Audrey asked.

“On the counter somewhere.”

She found it underneath a pile of produce bags and picked up but before she could say ‘ _ Hello _ ’, Richard’s voice came down the line. 

“Oi! Wanker!”

“No, he’s a bit occupied at the moment,” Audrey smirked.

“Oh, shit! Sorry, Aud!”

“No worries. Just a moment, I’ll get you over to Hurricane Clarkson.” Audrey held the phone towards Jeremy who was wiping his hands. “It’s Hammond. He called me a wanker. But that’s not the worst part - the worst part is he thought I was  _ YOU _ . Can you imagine?”

Jeremy gave her a smack as she moved back to the living room. “That’s enough cheek out of you, thanks very much!” Audrey just grinned and blew a kiss back in his direction as Jeremy tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and bellowed, “Hammond? What’s all this about you calling my Audrey a wanker?” 

Audrey could hear Richard’s betrayed squeak from the other end and giggled, settling back onto the sofa and watching as Jeremy continued both the conversation and his attempt at cookery. 

“That’s neither here nor there, you pathetic, minute excuse for a man. I’ll have no more lip from you insofar as regards my lady.” Jeremy laughed as the indignant squeaking continued, “Alright, man, alright! She was taking the piss and you know it, calm down you pillock. … No, it was fine. Better than fine, actually, you missed out. … Well, next time you’ll just have to disappoint the housewives of Britain and cancel the awful daytime telly interviews. … No, I’ve no sympathy for you at all. And don’t bother calling May because you won’t get any there, either. … That was in reference to the state of her kitchen, actually. … Yes, I AM cooking. … Yes, we WILL both be fine tomorrow. … Look, if you just called to be an irritating little- … Alright, alright, I appreciate the concern for my welfare, unnecessary as it is. ... Yeah, fine. See you Tuesday.”

“What did he want, then?”

“Just checking in, making sure I got home in one piece,” Jeremy said, tossing his mobile back into the chaos of the counter top.

“Because you’re a sad old man who needs looking after?”

“No, because- Now look here, woman, I’m starting to wonder why I pined for you all week!”

“Because I do that one thing that you really,  _ really _ like.”

Jeremy’s cheeks took on a rather rosy hue at this but he continued to bluster, albeit not terribly convincingly, “You could quite easily be replaced, you know!”

“Pffft, hardly,” Audrey had heaved herself off the sofa and moved back to the kitchen where she wound her arms around Jeremy from behind and nuzzled up against his shoulder blade, “Were you really pining?”

“Maybe a bit.”

“Hmm. I might’ve been a bit as well.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Jeremy said solemnly.

“Good. If you did, I’d have to kill you.”

“Aud?”

“Hmm?”

“It might’ve been a bit more than a bit.”

“Jeremy?”

“Yes?”

“I might’ve just been a bit sick in my mouth.”

“ _ GET OUT _ !” Jeremy laughed and shooed Audrey back towards the living room.

*******

Jeremy had set her up on the sofa after they’d eaten with a full glass of wine and the rest of the bottle on standby, besides. Audrey watched through hooded eyes as he set about rectifying the state of her kitchen. It actually hadn’t been awful, whatever it was that they’d just eaten. Of course, she’d had to be reasonably disdainful about it - appearances had to be kept, after all. That was part of the beauty of this thing they had going on. The constant piss-taking made the moments of unadulterated sweetness all the more precious and unexpected. 

Jeremy had been a surprise from the beginning. Outwardly - the Jeremy Clarkson Persona - he was all bluster and noise and cutting remarks. That was how they’d started out, with verbal sparring matches in the halls at White City, rhetorical fencing around the coffee setup. Honestly, Audrey could have been quite content with just that - it was exhilarating to have someone who could match her dig for dig. Eventually, though, Jeremy had started slipping dulcet little phrases into the japery, catching her off guard. At first she’d figured it was just another level of banter, except that it became clear very quickly that those little locutions, so opposite the tone of the overarching repartee, were sincere. She’d started looking and listening a bit more closely then, and once he knew he had her undivided attention he’d opened up a second front. 

It was gentle at first, polite and unassuming, nothing that would raise anyone’s hackles if they’d noticed. A touch of her shoulder here, catching her elbow to get her attention there, nothing even mildly inappropriate like she might have expected, had she been expecting anything from him in that way. His final gambit had been a chummy arm round her shoulders on his way out the door for a filming trip. When Audrey had felt properly bereft of him as soon as he was out of sight, she knew she had it bad. She’d pretended not to, of course, once he’d come back, but any semblance of a fight she’d put up to his then slightly more obvious intentions was purely for show. The real surprise, though, was the complete 180 the man had done once he’d gotten her properly alone for the first time. They’d had an actual conversation as opposed to a lexical scrap. He’d touched her with more focused intent - and she’d touched back, encouraging. Most surprisingly of all, they hadn’t ended up in bed that evening. Just a kiss on the doorstep - of the wobbly-knee-inducing variety - and the promise of another evening to come. Audrey had realised at that point that Jeremy was either very,  _ VERY  _ good at the seduction game, or he was genuinely gentlemanly and not at all like anything she’d inferred or been told. From that particular evening onward she’d found that she couldn’t give a flaming toss which was the truth, she just wanted more; and he’d given her more - in spades. 

Audrey watched him over the rim of her glass as he finished the last few dishes and wiped down the counters. The subtleties of his active state had always amazed her. For someone so tall you’d expect a certain level of ungainliness, of clumsiness, of not being completely aware of the space around him, but Jeremy had none of that. He could, when duty called for him to play the irascible orangutan, but outside of the studio and away from the cameras there was something - not graceful, no, but…  _ sure  _ about his movements. Steady. Solid, but without being heavy handed. It translated to the way he touched her as well. It was reverent, like he had been given the greatest gift of all. That had been utterly astonishing to Audrey, since she was of the opinion that she wasn’t much of a catch to begin with, but he had always seemed to think otherwise and it was pointless to argue with the man once he’d made his mind up about something. 

At this point, he seemed to have made up his mind that he was finished in the kitchen and hung up the tea towel before wandering to the sofa and settling down at the opposite end from Audrey, reaching out with a long arm and rubbing a hand along her calf as she snudged her toes underneath his thigh. 

“Your kitchen has been returned to its normal state.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re lucky I like you or I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Audrey rolled her eyes, “Your generosity is only exceeded by your good looks.”

“Obviously,” Jeremy chuckled, “So, how’s the entirety of Channel Four?”

“Driving me mad, as usual. I think I killed six of them this week. Probably sacked twice that many, a few of them multiple times. The rest are on notice,” Audrey grinned.

“Is that a new record?”

“Might be.”

“What do I have to do to get you to jump ship and come work with us?”

“Jeremy,” Audrey sighed, “We’ve had this conversation several hundred times. This,” she motioned to the two of them, “Only works as well as it does because you don’t see me all the time. If I were always around you’d get sick of me all the sooner.”

“What makes you think I’ll ever get sick of you?”

“Clarkson, I’m a difficult person to deal with at the best of times.  _ Everyone  _ gets sick of me sooner or later.”

“How long have we been doing this, Aud?”

“A while.”

Jeremy’s face went serious, his voice deep, “How long, Audrey.”

“Five years in August,” she said, looking anywhere but at him.

“And somehow I haven’t got sick of you yet.”

“More fool you.”

“Audrey,” he was using  _ that  _ tone now, the gentle, quiet one, the one that he bloody well knew she couldn’t resist. “Did it ever occur to you that if I were going to get sick of you, I’d have done it already? That maybe I’d quite like to have you around a bit more, even?”

“Honestly?” she asked, and judging by the raise of his eyebrow she knew he was after the truth. “The first bit, yes. The second bit, no. Not really.”

“Alright, let’s tackle the first bit first. Since I haven’t gotten sick of you yet, what’re the odds I’m going to get sick of you anytime soon?”

“Increasing exponentially by the day if I had to guess,” Audrey quipped, trying to inject a note of levity into the proceedings. She expected exasperation from him at this point and was surprised to see him looking at her thoughtfully instead.

Jeremy shook his head, “I don’t know where you ever got hold of the idea that you’re not worthwhile, but if I ever meet the person who put it into your head I’ll kill them to death, set fire to their corpse, and send it over a cliff. In a  _ Marina _ .”

“I dunno, Clarkson, do you think the Marina is strictly necessary? I mean, talk about rubbing salt on the wound.”

“Okay, the corpse fire and the Marina might just be an attestation to my penchant for destruction,” he shifted on the sofa and held his arms out in an invitation for Audrey to curl up next to him. She did, and he tucked her head under his chin, “But I stand by killing them to death.”

Audrey huffed a laugh, “Thank you, I guess?”

Jeremy pressed a kiss into her hair, “Now, the second thing-”

“Jeremy-”

“No, hang on, Aud, just for a minute, okay?” Audrey sighed but stayed quiet, so he continued, “Now, the offer stands, just as it’s stood since the first time I made it. If anything it’s even easier now - the perks of total control and all. But it’s not just the job. I know I’m away a great deal and that doesn’t show any signs of slowing down for the time being. I’m astonished you’ve put up with it this long, honestly. But here’s the thing, Aud - I’d happily have been spending more time for you for ages now, but I know how much you like your space so I just continued to let you dictate the schedule.”

“It wouldn’t be fair of me to monopolize you. Besides, you can’t make something out of nothing, and you don’t have that much free time to begin with.”

“We make time for what’s important to us.”

Audrey craned her neck and looked up at him, “So I’m important now, am I?”

“You have been since the day I met you.”

They looked at each other for a long minute. For once in her life, Audrey was completely unable to turn the moment on its head by cracking wise - she didn’t even  _ want _ to. She tucked her head back where it had been, nestled under his chin, and said, “Do I get to keep you past breakfast, or are you back to being the exclusive property of W. Chump & Sons tomorrow?”

“Would you believe it if I said I cleared the whole day already in anticipation of this very conversation?”

“Do you know, I think I would,” Audrey said. “And I suppose I could be persuaded to make more time for you, even though you already have a rather inflated opinion of your own importance,” she smiled slyly and snuggled a bit closer, kissing him just below his ear.

Jeremy chuckled, “I love you, too, Aud.”

*******


End file.
